Unanswered posts

Please lose the advert on the Community Page ; replace it with postings and make it page 1.
This is a FORUM - people want to read about how other people are dealing with divorce - you risk losing your greatest strength - the input from people going through divorce - put as many Forum postings as possible on the Community Page- Page 1.
Move the Home Page to Page 2 and get rid of those awful nursery school images?

Hello

When i found wiki i wanted to know how much the divorce was going to cost me.

In the last year i have seen the same question hundreds of times.

I asked three sols how much not one would answer only the hourly rate and what they wanted on account.

I saw the advert bought it and 16 weeks on its all but over and includeing court costs has cost less than a grand, thats half what one sol wanted on account.

I dont know how this site is maintained but it must cost lots to keep going, we dont pay to use it.

I suppose what i am saying is that this site saved me money stress and helped me get through this nasty process.

So how the owner set out pages is fine with me

We started the homepage/menu re-design work around a month ago
the following key aims:

1) To increase home page loading speed so that new arrivals don't give up and leave even before they see the Wiki home page.

Result: Home page now loads on average in 2 seconds verses original 12 seconds.
Result: Bounce rate (newbies abandoning site before first page) reduced 300%

2) To make it much easier for Newbies to get a good feel of what is availabled on the site, hence the 'nursery school' large icons of the main features/resources.

Result: General feedback to Wikivorce team has been very positive.

3) To increase the speed and responsiveness of the whole site.

Result: the general page load times throughout the site have improved very significantly. Making it much easier to browse quickly through the forums/blogs.

Have you not noticed an improvement in Wiki site responsiveness?

Downsides:

Yes - the lists of latest posts/blogs/forum posts are no longer on the home page.

BUT they are all still there on the Community Home Page which is where we expect members to "hang out" as their home.

The 'home' page is now a Welcome Page.

This is exactly the same approach taken by all other major social network sites for exactly the same speed and responsiveness reasons:

Facebook home page: www.facebook.com/
(not much going on there - doesnt stop 16275 billion people using it everyday)

Friends reunited: www.friendsreunited.co.uk/
(no big lists of latest posts there either)

www.myspace.com/
(the same)

So in summary the changes were essential for technical, performance and usability reasons as Wikivorce grows.

And as for advertising. Wikivorce has less FAR, FAR fewer adverts than similar sites. We turn our backs on lots of potential advertising income because we don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant and unwanted ads.

Wikivorce - the webs last GoogleAd free zone

But we do believe that it is appropriate to make people aware of relevant/beneficial services and events such as:
- Fixed Price divorces
- Pension valuations
- the Starting Over Show (a divorce fair in March)
etc

Watch this space! - I am working right now on a new advanced page for everyone who helps by replying to posts to have much improved visibility of all the latest posts / blogs / comments etc.

Just had one of those lightbulb moments

I have implemented a "redirection" when you log in
so that as soon as you log-in you are taken to the
Community Home page.

So in effect we now have:

1) A welcome home page for Newbies that meets their needs.

2) A Community home page that is now the "Automatic" home page for logged in members with everything they need on it.

Everyone is happy - Wooooo hooooo

(Must go lie down now before I have any more brainwaves )

Knew there was a reason we call you wikigod